Ryan: LI loses if de Blasio wins Senate

This year’s contest to control the New York State Senate finds the New York City mayor inflicting his political agenda throughout the region. It’s a high-stakes game for Bill de Blasio and for Long Island.

Wise business leaders will ignore political “shorthand” like the mayor’s self-defined agenda. They will also avoid partisan debates, stump-speech posturing and election-cycle hyperbole.

What they should be watching for are public policies that encourage or inhibit their ability to grow their businesses and create jobs. Whether it’s a town board providing a knee-jerk rejection to a modest building expansion or a state government with confiscatory taxes, elected officials need to be held accountable by businesses for the environment they create – and whether it harms or helps economic growth.

This is why de Blasio’s remarks on NPR last week tell you everything you need to know about what’s at stake this Election Day. He called on supporters to “take” the Senate and to launch city-centric de Blasio initiatives ranging from hiking the minimum wage to diverting additional state dollars into the city school system. His manifesto is clear and quite unapologetic about realigning the State Senate to pay for the city’s needs.

Ironically, his spouse recently journeyed to Long Island to headline a Democratic fundraiser, for the express purpose of finding suburban allies to support their urban agenda.

Long Island has had one brutal experience with a city-controlled Senate; it resulted in an MTA tax on Island businesses that, in turn, sparked a political rebellion. During that era, Long Island’s other needs – including state-directed infrastructure dollars and economic incentives – were either marginalized or ignored. This was made all the more painful given that Long Island sends $4 billion more in taxes to Albany than what we receive.

There’s nothing being heard in the current political cycle to suggest de Blasio “taking” the Senate would result in anything less than the creation of a desolate Long Island business environment burdened with even more taxes and a region of 2.7 million people silenced by the mayor of New York City.

Ryan is executive director of the Association for a Better Long Island.